British Midland profit nosedives to 833,000 pounds

BRITISH MIDLAND, the country's second-biggest scheduled airline, yesterday reported a sharp fall in profits from pounds 2.56m in 1991 to pounds 833,000 last year, writes Michael Harrison.

The airline and its parent company, Airlines of Britain, which recorded a profit of pounds 834,000, would have dipped into loss if not for one-off aircraft sales and profits from its captive insurance company.

Loganair, the group's Glasgow-based Scottish carrier, cut its losses from pounds 1.97m to pounds 1.48m while Manx Airlines suffered a sharp drop in profits from pounds 1.6m to pounds 87,000.

Sir Michael Bishop, chairman, nevertheless described the performance as satisfactory in the light of a difficult year for the airline industry worldwide. British Midland had recovered strongly in the second half with a pounds 10m turnaround from first-half losses.

Sir Michael added that British Midland had begun this year strongly with overall passenger levels up 15.4 per cent in the first quarter, a 26 per cent rise in the number of business- class passengers carried and passenger volumes on its domestic routes from Heathrow to Glasgow, Belfast and Edinburgh up by 5.6 per cent - the first growth for more than two years.